By Devah Pager, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, and Bruce Western 

  Court-related fines and fees are widely levied on criminal defendants who are frequently poor and have little capacity to pay. Such financial obligations may produce a criminalization of poverty, where later court involvement results not from crime but from an inability to meet the financial burdens of the legal process. We test this hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial of court-related fee relief for misdemeanor defendants in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. We find that relief from fees does not affect new criminal charges, convictions, or jail bookings after 12 months. However, control respondents were subject to debt collection efforts at significantly higher rates that involved new warrants, additional court debt, tax refund garnishment, and referral to a private debt collector. Despite significant efforts at debt collection among those in the control group, payments to the court totaled less than 5 percent of outstanding debt. The evidence indicates that court debt charged to indigent defendants neither caused nor deterred new crime, and the government obtained little financial benefit. Yet, fines and fees contributed to a criminalization of low-income defendants, placing them at risk of ongoing court involvement through new warrants and debt collection.

American Sociological Review, Volume 87, Issue 3, 2022.

By Lindsay Bing, Becky Pettit, Ilya Slavinski

Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that although the majority of defendants readily pay for and conclude their case, African American, Latinx, and economically disadvantaged defendants spend disproportionate amounts of money and time resolving theirs. Analysis of criminal case records illustrates the disparate impact of monetary sanctions through the accrual of debt and time spent resolving a charge. Interviews reveal irreconcilable tensions between American ideals of equality in sentencing and the meaning and value of money and time in an increasingly unequal society.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 118–136  , 2022.

By Brittany Friedman, Alexes Harris, Beth M. Huebner, Karin D. Martin, Becky Pettit, Sarah K.S. Shannon, Bryan L. Sykes

Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violations with important variability in law and practice across states. These differences allow for the identification of features of law, policy, and practice that differentially shape access to justice and equality before the law. Common practices undermine individuals’ rights and fuel inequality in the effects of unpaid monetary sanctions. These observations lead us to offer a number of specific recommendations to improve the administration of justice, mitigate some of the most harmful effects of monetary sanctions, and advance future research.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 221–43, 2022

By Kate K. O’Neill, Tyler J Smith, Ian Kennedy

Although men’s incarceration rates have declined in the United States, women’s have stayed steady and even risen in some areas. At the same time, courts have increased their use of monetary sanctions, especially for low-level offenses. We propose that women’s incarceration trends can be partially explained by county dependence on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue. We suggest that monetary sanctions expose female defendants to processes that increase their likelihood of incarceration, especially in counties more reliant on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue, and where women’s poverty rates are high. Using data from Washington State, we find county dependence on monetary sanctions is positively associated with rates of women sentenced to incarceration. Although rural counties’ rates are higher, they depend on monetary sanctions no more than nonrural counties do.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 157–72. 2022;  

By Mary Pattillo and Gabriela Kirk

Monetary sanctions include fines, fees, restitution, surcharges, interest, and other costs imposed on people who are convicted of crimes ranging from traffic violations to violent felonies.  We analyze how people in the court system theorize about monetary sanctions with regards to four kinds of justice: constitutional, retributive, procedural, and distributive justice.  Drawing on qualitative interviews with sixty-eight people sentenced to pay monetary sanctions in Illinois, we identify five themes that illuminate how respondents think about these forms of justice: monetary sanctions are: (1) justifiable punishment, (2) impossible to pay due to poverty, (3) double punishment, (4) extortion, and (5) collected by an opaque and greedy state.  We find that for defendants in the criminal justice system, monetary sanctions serve some retributive aims, but do not align with the other three domains of justice.  We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review  Volume 4, Issue 1, 2020.

By Pau Pérez-Sales

FROM THE PREFACE: Sadly, it is highly likely that psychological torture is committed by governments worldwide and yet, notwithstanding the serious moral questions that this disturbing and elusive concept raises, and limited research in the area, there is no operational or legal definition.This pioneering new book provides the first scientific definition and instrument to measure what it means to be tortured psychologically, as well as how allegations of psychological torture can be judged. Ground in cross-disciplinary research across psychology, anthropology, ethics, philosophy, law and medicine, the book is a tour de force which analyses the legal framework in which psychological torture can exist, the harrowing effects it can have on those who have experi- enced it, and the motivations and identities of those who perpetrate it.

NY. Routledge. 2017. 445p.

By Chinwike Okereke, Adrià Cots Fernández & Maria-Goretti Loglo

This briefing paper by IDPC and the African Law Foundation (AFRILAW) presents new evidence on the physical and mental violence faced by people who use drugs in Nigeria, both at the hands of law enforcement agents and in drug treatment centres. Drawing on desk research and on a survey of 79 people who use drugs and other stakeholders in Nigeria, the papers shows that in Nigeria people who use drugs are routinely subject to physical, mental and sexual violence, sometimes meeting the definition of torture or ill-treatment under international law. Many respondents highlighted the gendered aspect of these forms of torture and ill-treatment, while others pointed to a disproportionate impact on those marginalized on the basis of poverty or status. Although the occurrence of violence is widespread and well known, only one survey respondent brought a formal complaint, and none achieved any form of compensation or redress. The report concludes with a series of recommendations on how to prevent and provide redress for the forms of torture and ill-treatment documented in this report. We emphasise the need to reform laws and policies that criminalise people who use drugs, and to ensure access to voluntary, evidence-based, and rights-based drug treatment and harm reduction services.

London: International Drug Policy Consortium, 2022. 24p.

By AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

From the Introduction: Amnesty International’s research on the global use of the death penalty in 2022 revealed a spike in the number of people known to have been executed worldwide, including a significant increase in executions for drug-related offences. This negative trend contrasts with a countervailing positive tendency: a substantial number of countries have taken decisive steps away from the death penalty in 2022, marking remarkable progress against the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Known executions, excluding the thousands believed to have taken place in China, significantly increased by 53% on those for 2021, from 579 (2021) to 883 (2022). The executions recorded in 2022 were the highest since 2017 (993).2 Secrecy and restrictive state practices continued to impair an accurate assessment of the use of the death penalty in several countries, including China, North Korea and Viet Nam.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL GLOBAL REPORT 2022. 46p.

By Richard Wortley

FROM THE COVER: This book examines the control ofproblem behaviour in prison from a situational crime prevention perspective. Following the success of situational crime prevention in community settings, Richard Wortley argues that the same principles can be used to help reduce the levels of assault, rape, self-harm, drug use, escape and collective violence in our prison systems. This pioneering new study proposes a two-stage model of situational prevention that moves beyond traditional opportunity-reduction: it attempts to reconcile the contradictory urges to control prison disorder by 'tightening-up' and hardening the prison environment on the one hand, and 'loosening-off and normalising it on the other. Combining a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of existing research with original investigation and ground-breaking conclusions, Situational Prison Control will be of great interest to academics and practitioners both in the areas of corrections and crime prevention more generally.

Cambridge. University of Cambridge Press. 2002.263p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Edda Frankot

This open access book analyses the practice of banishment and what it can tell us about the values of late medieval society concerning morally acceptable behaviour. It focuses on the Dutch town of Kampen and considers the exclusion of offenders through banishment and the redemption of individuals after their exile. Banishment was a common punishment in late medieval Europe, especially for sexual offences. In Kampen it was also meted out as a consequence of the non-payment of fines, after which people could arrange repayment schemes which allowed them to return. The book firstly considers the legal context of the practice of banishment, before discussing punishment in Kampen more generally. In the third chapter the legal practice of banishment as a punitive and coercive measure is discussed. The final chapter focuses on the redemption of exiles, either because their punishment was completed, or because they arranged for the payment of outstanding fines.

Bern: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 140p.

By Tim Causer and Philip Schiofield

The present edition of Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australia consists of fragmentary comments headed ‘New Wales’, dating from 1791; a compilation of material sent to William Wilberforce in August 1802; three ‘Letters to Lord Pelham’ and ‘A Plea for the Constitution’, written in 1802–3; and ‘Colonization Company Proposal’, written in August 1831. Of this material, Bentham printed and published the first two ‘Letters to Lord Pelham’ and ‘A Plea for the Constitution’, but the remainder is published here for the first time. These writings, with the exception of ‘Colonization Company Proposal’, are intimately linked with Bentham’s panopticon penitentiary scheme, which he regarded as an immeasurably superior alternative to criminal transportation, the prison hulks, and English gaols in terms of its effectiveness in achieving the ends of punishment. He argued, moreover, that there was no adequate legal basis for the authority exercised by the Governor of New South Wales. In contrast to his opposition to New South Wales, Bentham later composed ‘Colonization Company Proposal’ in support of a scheme proposed by the National Colonization Society to establish a colony of free settlers in southern Australia. He advocated the ‘vicinity-maximizing principle’, whereby plots of land would be sold in an orderly fashion radiating from the main settlement, and suggested that, within a few years, the government of the colony should be transformed into a representative democracy.

London: UCL Press, 2022. 619p.

Edited by Janet Weston and Virginia Berridge

This Witness Seminar, held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in May 2017, brings together some of those involved in influencing and implementing prison policy decisions surrounding HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. AIDS first appeared in Europe in the early 1980s, and prisons were soon identified as sites that would face particular challenges. Injecting drug use was one of the primary modes of HIV transmission, and the large numbers of drug users passing through prisons meant that the prevalence of HIV was feared to be high. Added to this were suspicions about the frequency of risky sexual activity and injecting drug use within prisons. Prisoners were not only thought to be at a higher risk of already having HIV or AIDS, but prisons themselves were seen as an ideal environment for the spread of infection amongst inmates, potentially also from inmates to staff, and ultimately from released prisoners to the wider population. Urgent decisions had to be made about how to minimise disruptions prompted by diagnoses or fears of HIV and AIDS, how to reduce the risks of HIV transmission, and how to look after prisoners already affected. The emergence of HIV and AIDS highlighted many of the existing tensions and problems surrounding healthcare for prisoners. Witnesses described the reluctance of the prison service to acknowledge and tackle difficult issues, but also observed that there did not seem to have been an HIV or AIDS epidemic within prisons in England and Wales. What also emerged was a sense of some of the ongoing difficulties facing the prison service, in terms of lost gains in healthcare services, mounting overcrowding, and a failure to learn the lessons of the past.

London: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2017. 67p.

By Marcelo F. Aebi, Léa Berger-Kolopp, Christine Burkhardt, Mélanie M. Tiago

How many inmates are held in European prisons? Among them, how many are women? How many are foreign citizens? How many are not serving a final sentence? How many people enter prison every year, and how long do they remain there? Are there enough places for all of them? What is the ratio of inmates per member of prison staff? How much do prisons cost? If you are looking for the data necessary to provide answers to these and many other similar questions, this is the book for you. The Sourcebook of prison statistics compiles absolute numbers for 30 prison-related measures and computes another 30 indicators which can be used for comparative purposes. The sourcebook should be used together with Volume 1 of the Prisons in Europe 2005-2015 collection, which provides the context and methodology used to produce the data presented here. 

Strasburg: Council of Europe, 2019. 217p

By  Marcelo F. Aebi Léa Berger-Kolopp Christine Burkhardt Mélanie M. Tiago;  The European Union and the Council of Europe

  Country-based information on penal institutions and prison populations was collected through questionnaires sent to the prison administrations of the member states of the Council of Europe. The information collected was analysed by the authors of the study. This publication is divided into four parts across two volumes. Parts 1 to 3 are presented in this volume. Part 4 (volume 2) presents the data received from the prison administrations of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, as well as the rates, ratios and percentages computed by the authors of this study, which were used to produce the figures included in the present volume. 

Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2019. 366p.

By Heino Stöver, Anna Tarján, Gergely Horváth & Linda Montanari 

People who inject drugs are often imprisoned, which is associated with increased levels of health risks including overdose and infectious diseases transmission, affecting not only people in prison but also the communities to which they return. This paper aims to give an up-to-date overview on availability, coverage and policy framework of prison-based harm reduction interventions in Europe. Available data on selected harm reduction responses in prisons were compiled from international standardised data sources and combined with a questionnaire survey among 30 National Focal Points of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction to determine the level of availability, estimated coverage and policy framework of the interventions. …. While 21 countries address harm reduction in prison in national strategic documents, upon-release interventions appear only in 12.

Conclusions. Availability and coverage of harm reduction interventions in European prisons are limited, compared to the community. There is a gap between international recommendations and ‘on-paper’ availability of interventions and their actual implementation. Scaling up harm reduction in prison and throughcare can achieve important individual and public-health benefits.

Harm Reduction Journal volume 18, Article number: 67 (2021) 

By  William Arbour, Guy Lacroix, Steeve Marchand

Increasing evidence suggests that incarceration can improve inmates' social reintegration under certain circumstances. Yet, the mechanisms through which incarceration may lead to successful rehabilitation remain largely unknown. This paper finds that participation in social rehabilitation programs can significantly reduce recidivism only when inmates are evaluated by an assessment tool which allows to identify their criminogenic needs. This suggests that targeting criminogenic needs is crucial for successful rehabilitation. We also find that inmates with a high risk score or who exhibit procriminal attitudes benefit little from participation. To control for selection, we instrument participation with program availability at the time and place of incarceration. We also use a coefficient stability approach to test for omitted variable biases. Both approaches yield similar results.

Unpublished paper, 2023. 44p.

By Matthew R. Durose and Leonardo Antenangeli

This report presents findings on recidivism of females from BJS’s study on persons released from state prison across 34 states in 2012. It compares females and males by their commitment offenses, recidivism patterns during the 5 years following release (from 2012 to 2017), and post-release offenses.

Washington DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 6p.

By Lauren G. Beatty and; Tracy L. Snell

This report provides statistics on whether prisoners were required to have a work assignment, the types of work they performed while incarcerated, and reasons they chose to have a work assignment if one was not required. Findings are based on data collected in the most recent Survey of Prison Inmates, which was conducted in 2016 through face-to-face interviews with a national sample of federal and state prisoners.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 7p.

By Matthew R. Durose and Leonardo Antenangeli

For the first time, BJS used prison records from the National Corrections Reporting Program and criminal history data to analyze various characteristics and the arrest history of persons admitted to state prison in the United States. The report presents findings on the age at first arrest, number of prior arrests, and length of criminal history of persons admitted to state prison in 2009 and 2014. It also examines the post-prison arrests during the 2 years following their release from prison.

Highlights

• More than 1 in 4 persons admitted to state prison in 34 states in 2014 had been sentenced for a violent offense.

• The 369,200 persons admitted to state prison in 34 states in 2014 had an estimated 4.2 million prior arrests in their criminal histories, including the arrest that resulted in their prison sentence.

• In both 2009 and 2014, persons admitted to prison had a median of nine prior arrests in their criminal histories.

• About 1 in 10 persons admitted in 2014 at age 24 or younger had at least one prior out-of-state arrest, and about 4 in 10 persons admitted at age 40 or older had at least one such arrest.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 2023. 36p.

By Gabriel Tarde. Translated by Rapelje Howell

From the Introduction by Piers Beirne. ”…. Tarde's interventions in criminology are among the most elusive in the discipline. One among several reasons for this is that he was an insular and often bitter antagonist who cultivated neither the allies nor the disciples required of a systematic intellectual legacy. Indeed, almost to the end of his life, Tarde was unique among French academics in that, despising the intellectual domination of the metropolis, he had no secure position within the all-powerful French university system. Tarde's self-imposed isolation has doubtless contributed to the unfortunate fact that his many intellectual, political, and organizational interventions in the formative years of criminology tend nowadays to be relegated to the status of little more than a footnote in intellectual history….”

New Brunswick. Transaction. 2001. 606p. CONTAINS MARK-UP